SUBHEAD: Obama's says he'd rather have one great term than two mediocre ones... He may not get either.
By Ralph Nader on 29 January 2010 in Nader.org -
(http://www.nader.org/index.php?/archives/2169-On-the-State-of-the-Union.html)
Image above: "State of the Union" by Ralph Bashki ("Fritz the Cat" animator). From (http://www.ralphbakshi.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=35&products_id=289)
The President’s State of the Union Speech is the Big Speech of the year. Yet there is never an opportunity either for the press or the citizenry to promptly follow up with any questions or requests for clarifications. As a result, doubt and misunderstandings fester.
Watching President Obama’s speech the other evening before a joint session of vociferous members of Congress, quiet Supreme Court Justices and military brass, I jotted down a few items for the White House to consider.
First, Mr. Obama cited the Senate’s inaction four times in contrast to the House of Representatives. To add to his frustration, he cited the Republican leadership for insisting that “sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town…”
What he did not do was to urge his fellow Democrats to change the filibuster rule by a simple majority vote. As a legal expert, Tom Geoghegan wrote to Senate majority leader Harry Reid (Dem. Nev) this week, “the Senate can act to change its rules, any rule, by majority vote, even a rule requiring a greater one.” That means that the Democrats can change this rule with only 51 of their 59 votes in the Senate and get these bills passed. Why President Obama did not tell tens of millions of Americans Wednesday evening about how to break the logjam, the gridlock on health insurance, energy, jobs, financial reform and other measures, that they dislike, is a question only he can answer. “Certainly Senate Rule 22 itself should be changed, so that there is ultimately a simple majority for a cloture limiting debate vote,” according to Geoghegan.
Second, since dollars invested in energy efficiency and renewable energy have greater, safer, returns than money going into what Mr. Obama calls “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants and clean coal technologies,” (which require heavy government subsidies), why did he accord the latter the same priority as the former?
Third, President Obama promised to double our exports over the next five years. This really raised eyebrows, leading New York Times reporter Helene Cooper to write that this highly ambitious goal would require him to persuade China to revalue its currency by 40 percent, “get global economic growth to outperform the salad days from 2003 to 2007 and lower taxes for American companies that do business abroad,” plus “forget about strengthening the dollar.”
He left his own supporters wondering how he could perform this miracle and not forget his campaign promise to revise NAFTA.
Fourth, on health insurance reform, Mr. Obama said: “If anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.” Well, Mr. President, try what you supported before you became a Presidential candidate—single payer, full Medicare for all, with free choice of doctor and hospital. Remember you did not allow single payer adherents to have a seat at the table, the way the CEO of Aetna did five times in the White House. (For more see SinglePayerAction.org)
Fifth, you alluded as one reason for the multi-trillion dollar deficits you inherited from the Bush regime was “not paying for two wars.” Well, you also are not pressing for a war tax to pay for your two wars, as Rep. David Obey (Dem. Wisc) urged you and other Democrats to do a few months ago. What is the difference and why? Sixth, the President asserted the need to “freeze government spending for three years,” but excluded the well-documented, bloated, wasteful, redundant Pentagon budget.
He also did not go after the huge corporate welfare budget of subsidies, handouts, giveaways and bailouts. Instead, he left many civic groups wondering what cuts might be coming for programs relating to food, auto, job and environmental safety. Seventh, his brief words of foreign and military policy came across as Bush redux trying to show how tough he is. He compared notches on his belt in terms of the number of captured or slain “Al Qaeda’s fighters and affiliates.”
He, of course, did not make any comparisons with the far greater number of innocent civilian causalities from drones and other bombings. These were strange phrasings from a recent Nobel Peace Prize winner who managed to ignore completely the peace process for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
There was not one sentence on, arguably, the core issue in that tumultuous region. Eighth, on the Iraq war, he went over the top, declaring “make no mistake: this war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home.” Not really. Both Bush and Obama have concluded that 50,000 soldiers will remain in Iraq indefinitely, with many more in the Persian Gulf region.
American taxpayers will be paying nearly $800 million a year just to guard the U.S. Embassy and its personnel in Baghdad. That sum alone is greater than either the annual budgets of OSHA ($502 million to deal with 58,000 work related deaths in America) or NHTSA ($730 million to deal with over 40,000 road fatalities.) I’m sending this column to the White House. You also may wish to send your observations to President Obama. Citizens should be more than spectators to the annual state of the union spectacle.
The SOTU Address Post-mortem
By George Mobus on 30 January 2010 in Question Everything -
(http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2010/01/the-sotu-address-postmortem.html)
Obama did not disappoint me. His rhetoric was pretty much what I would have expected. And he did not even attempt to address the deeper issues that are going to have such a major impact on all citizens of the world, as well as those of the US, in just a few years (or actually are already having a significant impact). That is the world of politics. It is the world of people who honestly, though mistakenly, believe that political process and policy decisions make reality.
In truth I could not listen after I heard him utter the phrase "clean coal". He is still so out of touch with simple physics that it is terribly sad. That his science adviser, John Holdren, a physicist, has not been able to make him understand that this is an oxymoron is sadder still (I'm assuming Holdren has tried). Same for Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy. Surely he is aware of the negative thermodynamics of sequestering carbon dioxide from coal burning, turning it into a compressed or liquefied gas and pumping it under extreme pressure into the ground! Or maybe their involvement in politics has made them forget their basic science. Who knows?
I did tune in for the post-speech commentary on NPR. Nothing really revealing there. The belief that something like a high speed rail in Florida is a good idea is also sad. Will it create a few jobs there? Probably. Will that be enough? Clearly not. Moreover, did anyone even think about the cost-benefit comparison between fixing the rail lines that we already have, beefing up rail transportation as it exists so that many more jobs would be created and it would benefit the whole country for ages to come vs. making it easier for business people to get between two cities that may actually be under water in a few decades? I seriously doubt it.
Here is the real problem. Our president doesn't really have a vision of the future. He has a vision of the past with a green sugar coating that makes it sound like a future. His problem is he really hasn't done the arithmetic to see if things add up. Otherwise he would know that the notion of restoring a growth-oriented economy is complete nonsense. And if he ever did, in fact realize this, he would then have to tell the truth to a lot of people who wouldn't want to hear it. And like Jimmy Carter, who did get it and did tell the truth, the American people would throw him out. In spite of Obama's statement that he would rather have one great term than two mediocre terms, he hasn't actually come to grips with what a great leader would need to do to have that kind of impact.
But look. We can't really blame him. He is in an impossible position. Even if he did get it and was willing to sacrifice his shot at a second term in office he would still face a completely dysfunctional government. He wouldn't be able to get anything done (unless he took my advice and declared Marshal law!) The current state of political affairs in the US is just untenable. The Congress is full of fools and madmen. They really don't care about the future, except as far as the next election is concerned. They are pretty ignorant themselves with a few notable exceptions. And for those few I imagine it must be excruciatingly frustrating to try to get anywhere in that environment. And the Supreme Court? Just look at their latest ruling (admittedly a 5-4 decision) that gives corporations unlimited access to buy elections. At least that is the likely effect.
These are the people who run our government folks. We, collectively, had a lot to do with putting them there. Electing Bush as president allowed the Supreme Court to be taken over by demagogic ideologues. Of course it had many other devastating effects on the country and the world (Iraq and Afghanistan certainly). But some of those could have been corrected by Obama if he actually had followed through on his promises. His decision to escalate in Afghanistan will, I think, prove to be one of his biggest mistakes in foreign affairs. His biggest mistake domestically remains his appointments of Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers to their respective positions. Or perhaps more so his acceptance of their formulas for fixing the economy (bailing out the banks).
So the upshot of the SOTU address is this: Things are going to get a lot worse, faster. Mark my words. If I'm wrong, you can come back in a few months or a few years and tell me I was full of s**t (I'm sure some of my students will be happy to see that). Somehow I don't think you will have the opportunity.
By Ralph Nader on 29 January 2010 in Nader.org -
(http://www.nader.org/index.php?/archives/2169-On-the-State-of-the-Union.html)
Image above: "State of the Union" by Ralph Bashki ("Fritz the Cat" animator). From (http://www.ralphbakshi.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=35&products_id=289)
The President’s State of the Union Speech is the Big Speech of the year. Yet there is never an opportunity either for the press or the citizenry to promptly follow up with any questions or requests for clarifications. As a result, doubt and misunderstandings fester.
Watching President Obama’s speech the other evening before a joint session of vociferous members of Congress, quiet Supreme Court Justices and military brass, I jotted down a few items for the White House to consider.
First, Mr. Obama cited the Senate’s inaction four times in contrast to the House of Representatives. To add to his frustration, he cited the Republican leadership for insisting that “sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town…”
What he did not do was to urge his fellow Democrats to change the filibuster rule by a simple majority vote. As a legal expert, Tom Geoghegan wrote to Senate majority leader Harry Reid (Dem. Nev) this week, “the Senate can act to change its rules, any rule, by majority vote, even a rule requiring a greater one.” That means that the Democrats can change this rule with only 51 of their 59 votes in the Senate and get these bills passed. Why President Obama did not tell tens of millions of Americans Wednesday evening about how to break the logjam, the gridlock on health insurance, energy, jobs, financial reform and other measures, that they dislike, is a question only he can answer. “Certainly Senate Rule 22 itself should be changed, so that there is ultimately a simple majority for a cloture limiting debate vote,” according to Geoghegan.
Second, since dollars invested in energy efficiency and renewable energy have greater, safer, returns than money going into what Mr. Obama calls “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants and clean coal technologies,” (which require heavy government subsidies), why did he accord the latter the same priority as the former?
Third, President Obama promised to double our exports over the next five years. This really raised eyebrows, leading New York Times reporter Helene Cooper to write that this highly ambitious goal would require him to persuade China to revalue its currency by 40 percent, “get global economic growth to outperform the salad days from 2003 to 2007 and lower taxes for American companies that do business abroad,” plus “forget about strengthening the dollar.”
He left his own supporters wondering how he could perform this miracle and not forget his campaign promise to revise NAFTA.
Fourth, on health insurance reform, Mr. Obama said: “If anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.” Well, Mr. President, try what you supported before you became a Presidential candidate—single payer, full Medicare for all, with free choice of doctor and hospital. Remember you did not allow single payer adherents to have a seat at the table, the way the CEO of Aetna did five times in the White House. (For more see SinglePayerAction.org)
Fifth, you alluded as one reason for the multi-trillion dollar deficits you inherited from the Bush regime was “not paying for two wars.” Well, you also are not pressing for a war tax to pay for your two wars, as Rep. David Obey (Dem. Wisc) urged you and other Democrats to do a few months ago. What is the difference and why? Sixth, the President asserted the need to “freeze government spending for three years,” but excluded the well-documented, bloated, wasteful, redundant Pentagon budget.
He also did not go after the huge corporate welfare budget of subsidies, handouts, giveaways and bailouts. Instead, he left many civic groups wondering what cuts might be coming for programs relating to food, auto, job and environmental safety. Seventh, his brief words of foreign and military policy came across as Bush redux trying to show how tough he is. He compared notches on his belt in terms of the number of captured or slain “Al Qaeda’s fighters and affiliates.”
He, of course, did not make any comparisons with the far greater number of innocent civilian causalities from drones and other bombings. These were strange phrasings from a recent Nobel Peace Prize winner who managed to ignore completely the peace process for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
There was not one sentence on, arguably, the core issue in that tumultuous region. Eighth, on the Iraq war, he went over the top, declaring “make no mistake: this war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home.” Not really. Both Bush and Obama have concluded that 50,000 soldiers will remain in Iraq indefinitely, with many more in the Persian Gulf region.
American taxpayers will be paying nearly $800 million a year just to guard the U.S. Embassy and its personnel in Baghdad. That sum alone is greater than either the annual budgets of OSHA ($502 million to deal with 58,000 work related deaths in America) or NHTSA ($730 million to deal with over 40,000 road fatalities.) I’m sending this column to the White House. You also may wish to send your observations to President Obama. Citizens should be more than spectators to the annual state of the union spectacle.
The SOTU Address Post-mortem
By George Mobus on 30 January 2010 in Question Everything -
(http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2010/01/the-sotu-address-postmortem.html)
Obama did not disappoint me. His rhetoric was pretty much what I would have expected. And he did not even attempt to address the deeper issues that are going to have such a major impact on all citizens of the world, as well as those of the US, in just a few years (or actually are already having a significant impact). That is the world of politics. It is the world of people who honestly, though mistakenly, believe that political process and policy decisions make reality.
In truth I could not listen after I heard him utter the phrase "clean coal". He is still so out of touch with simple physics that it is terribly sad. That his science adviser, John Holdren, a physicist, has not been able to make him understand that this is an oxymoron is sadder still (I'm assuming Holdren has tried). Same for Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy. Surely he is aware of the negative thermodynamics of sequestering carbon dioxide from coal burning, turning it into a compressed or liquefied gas and pumping it under extreme pressure into the ground! Or maybe their involvement in politics has made them forget their basic science. Who knows?
I did tune in for the post-speech commentary on NPR. Nothing really revealing there. The belief that something like a high speed rail in Florida is a good idea is also sad. Will it create a few jobs there? Probably. Will that be enough? Clearly not. Moreover, did anyone even think about the cost-benefit comparison between fixing the rail lines that we already have, beefing up rail transportation as it exists so that many more jobs would be created and it would benefit the whole country for ages to come vs. making it easier for business people to get between two cities that may actually be under water in a few decades? I seriously doubt it.
Here is the real problem. Our president doesn't really have a vision of the future. He has a vision of the past with a green sugar coating that makes it sound like a future. His problem is he really hasn't done the arithmetic to see if things add up. Otherwise he would know that the notion of restoring a growth-oriented economy is complete nonsense. And if he ever did, in fact realize this, he would then have to tell the truth to a lot of people who wouldn't want to hear it. And like Jimmy Carter, who did get it and did tell the truth, the American people would throw him out. In spite of Obama's statement that he would rather have one great term than two mediocre terms, he hasn't actually come to grips with what a great leader would need to do to have that kind of impact.
But look. We can't really blame him. He is in an impossible position. Even if he did get it and was willing to sacrifice his shot at a second term in office he would still face a completely dysfunctional government. He wouldn't be able to get anything done (unless he took my advice and declared Marshal law!) The current state of political affairs in the US is just untenable. The Congress is full of fools and madmen. They really don't care about the future, except as far as the next election is concerned. They are pretty ignorant themselves with a few notable exceptions. And for those few I imagine it must be excruciatingly frustrating to try to get anywhere in that environment. And the Supreme Court? Just look at their latest ruling (admittedly a 5-4 decision) that gives corporations unlimited access to buy elections. At least that is the likely effect.
These are the people who run our government folks. We, collectively, had a lot to do with putting them there. Electing Bush as president allowed the Supreme Court to be taken over by demagogic ideologues. Of course it had many other devastating effects on the country and the world (Iraq and Afghanistan certainly). But some of those could have been corrected by Obama if he actually had followed through on his promises. His decision to escalate in Afghanistan will, I think, prove to be one of his biggest mistakes in foreign affairs. His biggest mistake domestically remains his appointments of Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers to their respective positions. Or perhaps more so his acceptance of their formulas for fixing the economy (bailing out the banks).
So the upshot of the SOTU address is this: Things are going to get a lot worse, faster. Mark my words. If I'm wrong, you can come back in a few months or a few years and tell me I was full of s**t (I'm sure some of my students will be happy to see that). Somehow I don't think you will have the opportunity.
.
No comments :
Post a Comment